The crash that helped make the case for ATP
Thirty years ago, a multi-train fatal accident occurred at Purley, near Croydon. PAUL STEPHEN looks back at the crash and how it helped lead to the adoption of Automatic Train Protection
On March 4 1989, British Rail’s reputation for upholding safety on its network was dealt yet another grievous blow when five passengers were killed and more than 80 people were injured in a collision near Purley station in south London.
Sadly, it was the second time in only 12 weeks that tragedy had befallen the South East suburban network, following the terrible events at nearby Clapham on December 12 1988. A wiring fault had caused a signal to be passed at danger (SPAD), leading to 35 deaths ( RAIL 867).
The crash at Purley shared some similarities with Clapham, in that (once again) a SPAD had occurred placing one train directly into the path of another.
The offending train was the eight-car 1217 Littlehampton-Victoria service. Travelling at 60mph, it hurtled past a red signal that was protecting the rear of the four-car 1250 Horsham-Victoria stopping service.
Despite an emergency brake application by the driver of the fast train, the consequences of the high-impact collision on this four-track section of the Brighton Main Line were severe. Seven of the eight Littlehampton Class 421 vehicles were derailed. Six were sent plunging down a 20 metre-high embankment into local residents’ back gardens.
Many of these residents became the first responders, using their own ladders and tools to rescue those trapped inside the carriages before a total of 12 fire engines and 23 ambulances could be dispatched from across London, Surrey and Sussex.
For many of the 60 firefighters, 50 ambulance workers and 100 police officers in attendance that Saturday afternoon, memories were still painfully fresh of the Clapham crash that had occurred so recently, just nine miles away.
Their actions and professionalism at Purley were rightly praised. And we can only speculate if the death count might have been even higher had those emergency services personnel not been equipped with the valuable - if also harrowing - experience gained from those dreadful recent events.
However, unlike at Clapham, the subsequent accident investigation for Purley could find no fault with the signalling equipment.
The trains should have been at least two minutes apart, while there had been three signals warning the Littlehampton driver Robert Morgan that there was another train ahead.
The Railway Inspectorate instead concluded that the collision had been caused by Morgan’s failure to heed two caution aspects at preceding signals, which then made it impossible for him to stop in time once the final fateful red aspect came into view.
The train was equipped with Automatic Warning System (AWS), but the inquiry
The regularity with which such tragedies have occurred only heightens our sense of shock and the desire to do all that is possible to improve passenger safety. John Prescott, then Shadow Transport Secretary, speaking in a Parliamentary debate two days after the Purley crash
decided that Morgan had not properly heeded the alarm from the AWS, which he must have twice reset to acknowledge the caution signals without then obeying them by slowing down.
Morgan was fortunate to survive the crash. But despite his serious injuries, he had already been heavily pilloried by the press by the time he faced criminal proceedings the following year.
He would subsequently plead guilty in September 1990 to charges of manslaughter and endangering life, and was sentenced to 18 months in prison with 12 months suspended, later reduced on appeal to four months imprisonment.
Even before Purley, public confidence in the safety of transport - and indeed society in general - had been rocked by a close-running sequence of tragedies that had started two years earlier with the capsizing of the Herald of
Free Enterprise at Zeebrugge in March 1987. The King’s Cross fire (November 1987),
Piper Alpha oil platform explosion ( July 1988), Lockerbie bombing (December 1988), Clapham crash (December 1988) and Kegworth air disaster ( January 1989) had all swiftly followed, with a high watermark perhaps being reached five weeks later with the worst disaster in British sporting history, when 96 football fans were killed at Hillsborough during an FA Cup semi-final on April 15 1989.
When Secretary of State for Transport Paul Channon addressed MPs in the House of Commons two days after the Purley crash, it fell to his opposite number John Prescott (Shadow Transport Secretary and MP for Kingston-upon-Hull, East) to sum up the mood of the nation.
Prescott said: “When the news came through early on Saturday afternoon, I am sure that, like the Prime Minister, we all had the same dreadful feeling of ‘Oh no, not again’ as we were faced with yet another tragedy.
“The regularity with which such tragedies have occurred only heightens our sense of
shock and the desire to do all that is possible to improve passenger safety.
“Does the Secretary of State accept that there is growing concern among the travelling public about safety and a lack of confidence in the policies presently being pursued by British Rail?”
Prescott cited damning figures that, excluding the King’s Cross fire, 73 people had been killed in rail accidents in the previous five years. Regrettably, that number was to increase almost immediately, once the full facts had filtered through of the Bellgrove rail accident that had occurred in Glasgow only a few hours before the start of the Parliamentary debate on March 6 1989 (see panel).
Prescott went on to attack the government’s spending record on railways, adding: “Does he [Channon] accept that the financial climate set by himself and in which BR operates means that new safety measures such as the implementation of a new advanced warning system, which is being used elsewhere in Europe, have not been adopted?”
Channon defended the government’s investment record, stating that BR’s current yearly settlement of £ 560 million was one of the highest levels in real terms in UK history.
However, what was far more difficult to deny was the inescapable truth that the Purley accident would have been prevented by an Automatic Train Protection (ATP) system that would have automatically applied the brakes of the train passing the signal at ‘danger’, or when approaching a preceding one too fast.
The BR board had, in fact, recently carried out a review on whether to develop an ATP system similar to those already in operation overseas.
It had been accepted as BR policy in November 1988, but with existing ATP systems deemed incompatible with British signalling and traffic patterns, a development plan had been produced with prototype testing and evaluation not expected to take place until 1990-91.
While acknowledging the commitment made by BR, both the Purley and Clapham inquiries subsequently recommended that the provision of ATP should not be delayed. A banner repeater signal was also to be provided as an interim measure on the approach to Purley station.
Unfortunately, four more fatal accidents would occur from SPADs and deemed preventable by ATP before the end of the 1990s: at Newton in July 1991, Watford in August 1996, Southall in September 1997, and most infamously at Ladbroke Grove in
October 1999.
Alongside Clapham and Purley, each reinforced the need for a network-wide ATP system, which finally became mandatory with the Railway Safety Regulations 1999 that specified the complete rollout of the ATP variant TPWS (Train Protection and Warning System).
In 2007, there would be one final twist in the tale of the Purley rail crash. Driver Morgan’s conviction was overturned on appeal, after new information came to light that the signal he had passed at ‘danger’ was in fact a wellknown safety hazard.
While the original accident inquiry had concluded that drivers had slightly longer to see the signal while in motion than the seven seconds considered acceptable for a 90mph line, it was also accepted that the signal became obscured by station buildings as trains approached.
The signal was subsequently revealed to have been passed at danger four times in the five years preceding the crash, and the Appeal Court heard that had Morgan been in possession of this crucial fact in 1990, then it is unlikely he would have admitted manslaughter - meaning he would have faced a trial by jury.
Lord Justice Latham said in his decision to quash the conviction that had a jury known the state of the signalling system, they would - in his opinion - have been unlikely to find the driver guilty.
Morgan’s satisfaction at clearing his name would be short lived, however. He died in March 2009, aged 66, following an accident at sea.
Why Morgan, who had been a driver for 22 years without being involved in any serious incidents or SPADs, failed to react properly to those signals in 1989 will never be known. Having sustained serious injuries during the crash, he was left with no recollection of what aspects had been showing and was never able to explain how the accident had happened.